Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92 - Page 2

legowarrior · #1 February 2nd, 2012, 12:45 AM

What I wouldn't give to have just a few more pretender options. Love to have a pretender with access to death and fire natural, otherwise I'm starting to think the Liche with 1 fire and death is the best solution.

It seems that you need super high production is necessary, as is gold (I keep running out)! Misfortune is okay to take, but then so is death, but misfortune and death together is bad! Heat scales are okay in small amounts. It's really frustating making a pretender for this realm.

Kobal2 · #2 February 2nd, 2012, 04:58 AM

If you take a temp scale, take cold, not heat. At least if you have misfortune. Misfortune and Heat burn your labs a lot. Also cold will help with your water elementals, and doesn't affect the income of any underwater province you might score.

I wouldn't say you need super high production - the samurai are higher resource than average but they're not Ulmish black plates either. 1 or 0 is quite enough, you can always compensate by having more castles (even if those castles don't have labs or temples - a ninja castle is not the worst thing to have)

I'm not sure the Lich is all that great, because it won't get you into the water any easier whereas a tough bloke like the Lord of Plenty can even with just Const-0 items and some token Alteration research (Boots of the Behemoth, Ring of Poison Protection, Ring of Water Breathing, any helmet. Script Body Ethereal, Ironskin, Personal Luck, hold, hold, attack. At Const 2 he gets a Midget Masher or Gloves of the Gladiator instead, freeing his feet for Birch Boots).
As long as you keep him away from trolls, and possibly Ichtyids as well (nets always scare me), he should be able to stomp just about anything while always being one Returning away from home.

Shangrila00 · #3 February 2nd, 2012, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kobal2

If you take a temp scale, take cold, not heat. At least if you have misfortune. Misfortune and Heat burn your labs a lot. Also cold will help with your water elementals, and doesn't affect the income of any underwater province you might score.

I'd say heat is better. Jomon's best mages/recruitable thugs are the cold blooded Ryujin, and high heat makes it harder for people to wolven winter them to death.

Hopefully, the Onmyoji researching in those labs keep them from burning down too often.

legowarrior · #4 February 2nd, 2012, 11:42 AM

But if I don't go with a Rainbow or a Liche, what is my end game? Do I try to get into Dai Onis another way?

Kobal2 · #5 February 2nd, 2012, 12:41 PM

Well, you have astral mages with *5* other random paths, and the ability to craft crystal matrices in bulk to hook up any other mages you find so large armies supported by communions casting from an extremely open spellbook are a go - fog warriors, army of X, mass flight, weapons of sharpness, gaia's blessing, will of the fates, mass regeneration, relief, quickness... really, with the exception of death spells you can pretty much cast *anything* from *any castle* in the fullness of time.

You also should have a large and varied gem income - the only paths you're missing remote site searching in are death (which you can take on your god) and blood (which is semi-easy to bootstrap into with scouts and a death god, or that you can just ignore entirely). There's very little mundane equipment you can't make.

If you take D magic on your pretender, and you most definitely should strive to, you'll have tons of Shuras to raid with - without equipment a pair of them can take just about any amount of PD with little or no equipment. Sure, a proper SC will cream them, but you can make a lot more Shuras than the other guy can make SCs. All other things being equal, if you can take 2 provinces of his while he takes 1 of yours, you win.

Or you could indeed go Dai Onis (as I said earlier, with a D3 LoP they're just one booster and one empowerment away), but honestly they're not that great for their gem tag (not to mention they still carry upkeep over from the EA, so unlike other summons they'll wreck your bank account). I would take 4 Shuras over 1 Dai Oni any day, especially without a bless tailored for them.

If you're playing the latest CBM, treants are pretty neat and you shouldn't have too much trouble recruiting them using your bootsrap Nature summons (Kitsunes). Mechanical Giants are also good additions to your armies, and your E4 god will have no problem summoning them. You can get Grendelkins easily, too - any W1E2 Master Shug can get them with easy to forge boosters.

If the other guy is fielding communions too, you can pull a really nasty trick with your Dai Tengus and minimal equipment (a hat, MR & luck amulets, gems ): Cloud Trapeze in, Rain of Stones, retreat. Rince, repeat. Very tough to counter for anyone who isn't Pythium, especially if you put astral mages in the provinces he could retreat into so your opponent can't just Mind Hunt him.

Try and look up Baalz' guides to Tien Chi for more ideas, or even guides to Arcoscephale, both nations are comparable with Jomon in that they have lots of varied but weak paths. But suffice to say, as Jomon, don't sweat the endgame. You *rock* the endgame.
It's the early game you gotta watch out for.

legowarrior · #6 February 2nd, 2012, 01:06 PM

Cool, thanks. I have more questions if I may. Teaching Sign, how does that work with the Crystal Shield or Power of the Spheres? Does it stack and can you use it with communion. And Mediation, is it worth it to make a Master Matrix, and stick it on a Monk, so that they can cast mediation?

Kobal2 · #7 February 2nd, 2012, 01:22 PM

I'm honestly not sure (haven't actually played with Jomon in MP yet, most of my "wisdom" comes from playing Shinuyama and TC), but on paper both seem like great additions to a communion... until they run out of script, that is.
If you're fielding a large communion, once his scripting is over your Mediation monk could well get into his pixel head to cast Falling Frost or whatever over and over. The fatigue wipe seems neat for reverse communion purposes, but I'd probably give him a bow of some kind on top of the matrix and script him to cast Mediation x5, Shoot Whatevs. The teaching sign seems *extremely effing great* to stick a matrix on, even more so if it stacks with PotS (I don't know that it does, though).

As always, if you have any doubt whether this or that particular tactic works or not, the Debug mod is your friend.

legowarrior · #8 February 2nd, 2012, 04:27 PM

This has been a really helpful thread.
I might ignore death completely or use a Nushi to boot strap into it when the time is right.
How do Kenzoku compare to Shura?

Kobal2 · #9 February 3rd, 2012, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by legowarrior

How do Kenzoku compare to Shura?

They're a little worse in general, for a couple reasons.
The most obvious one is that their price tag is higher (and in pearls, the most valuable of gems). The first piece of gear they'll respectively want is also in favour of the Shura: Shuras call for a Golden Shield which is 5 gems+5 gems, while Kenzokus want a Horror Helm, which is 10 of a single type. Finally, Shuras have a cold aura, cold+poison immunity and can swim, while Kenzokus only have a crummy standard which doesn't help them hurt or scare away anyone.

Still I mean they're not *bad*, not at all. Just comparatively weaker. And they can't be banished or dust to dusted, nor targeted with anti-undead weapons, so there's that. On the other hand, they can be Controlled or Opposed. So if you're attacking a nation with ubiquitous D, go Kenzokus ; and Shuras will work longer on nations with high S.

But besides that consideration, and until your opponent starts gearing up anti-thugs equipped with undead-killing weapons, I'd probably just stick with Shuras if I had a choice in the matter.

Shangrila00 · #10 February 5th, 2012, 03:10 PM

The lantern shield is also 5+5 in CBM, adds fear, and is awesome. You can get the F/D crosspath with Oni Generals which aren't a terrible summon themselves. That said, you really need luck with astral income to afford any real number of astral summons.

The Shura annoys me. It's awesome, but that cold aura calls for taking cold scales, which cripple your Ryujin. Why are Ryujin cold blooded anyway? The other dragons, including the Tatsu aren't.

Come to think of it, how do you use Ryujin? There are so many contradictions. It has ridiculous mobility in dragon form, reasonable stats, and sacred, which says raiding thug, but they can't bless themselves and nothing else can and keep up. They can still thug even without a bless, but with only 1 slot in dragon form plus the cold blooded problem, it's really lackluster and easily killed for a 500 gold commander. Even the obvious buff for them, Breath of Winter, is useless since the same cold scales to empower it will kill the Ryujin. The only synergy I've been able to come up with is summoning a Dai Tengu and some additional tengu, giving it a crystal shield so it can cast divine bless and storm, and bring along Ryujin in dragon form so you have an entire flying army of storm immune casters, but even that sacrifices some of the Ryujin's mobility.

Now, if they have a priest level (their description says they spread their father's dominion which suggests some priestly power) and/or aren't cold blooded at least in dragon form, they'd be awesome, but as it is, my underwater forts tend to not recruit any commanders most turns.